Penguin Interview

--- title: "Penguin Interview" excerpt: "Make sure that you support the people that are out there doing things that matter, rather than marketing or flashy stuff, because that's who needs the help and are out there doing the things that people copy anyways." name: 'Penguin' username: '@penguin' interviewer: '@traviswyche' --- # RaidGuild Origin Stories - Penguin #### Travis Wyche: Let’s start with you explaining how you transitioned into working in Web3, or specifically what you were doing before? Who are you? (laughter) #### Penguin: My name is Penguin. I've been in this space since about 2019. Before that, I was a developer for almost ten years. In Web2, I was in bioinformatics making a SAS application for heart surgery software. I was creating software that would read people's blood and tell them the status of leukemia or lymphoma. I focused on next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics applications. I also worked in sports ticketing and was doing APIs and NFC scanning for events. Leading up to COVID, I was working for a large company. The sports ticketing industry was hit extremely hard by the pandemic, as you can imagine, so I had the privilege of working from home for about 18 weeks before being laid off. During that time, I was pretty much leading a double life. I was addicted to DAOs and learning about the new way of doing things. Even before COVID, **I was in MetaGame and talking to Pet3rPan and Yalor about doing all this stuff where it was more about creating and doing something and being part of something.** #### Travis Wyche: Cool. Is that how you heard about RaidGuild? #### Penguin: Yes. I have been a dev for a long time. When I came into MetaGame, I looked at how I could make crypto more of a part of my life. Being part of a developer collective, like RaidGuild, made a lot of sense, especially since I wasn't here for speculation and instead here to learn about smart contracts. I wanted to integrate what I had learned into NFTs. **Finding a group of people committed to professionalism gave me hope that I could make it in Web3.** When I received my first paychecks from work in Web3, through RaidGuild and doing events, it really helped solidify that this was something that I wanted to do. #### Travis Wyche: Now, at this point, you're in deep. I'm wondering, what does an average workday look like for you these days? #### Penguin: Deep is an understatement. I have different flow states. I'd say a couple of months ago, working from 8 am to 3:30 am was my habit. During the holidays, I took some time for self-care, but usually I find myself in about three different shifts. I get all my calls in the morning and then I'll spend a couple of hours with the family and doing personal stuff. After that I return to really crank on code and get some of that work done where I need to interact with other people. After breaking for dinner, I come back for the night shift, where I either need to interact with people on the other side of the world or I can code in solitude, without interruptions. It's definitely not a standard work schedule and generally revolves around what needs to get done, along with my other priorities. #### Travis Wyche: You have to protect your time; otherwise, people will just take it right out from under your feet. Can you remember your first raid, or maybe even the first raid that you spearheaded? #### Penguin: The first raid that I was on was testing out something called Money Circle. It was a way for us to do small loans to people where we would all pay the same amount, but it would choose who got the bonus that month. It was a pretty fun group of people to work with. #### Travis Wyche: What would you say is the biggest challenge that you faced, specifically pivoting into this Web3 work? #### Penguin: **The biggest challenge to transitioning into Web3 is that it takes a lot of runway and connections before you can really do it full time.** It was easier for me to build connections and make sure that I was financially stable during the transition, because I was still working another job. Another big consideration is health care, especially with a family to support. It’s a leap of faith when you leave a cushy job that takes care of those kinds of things. Until you really feel the freedom of being in web3, it's challenging, because **we've been colonized to believe that it's better to sit in a box than it is to do what you'd like to do.** Figuring out something like Opolis, where I can get health care for my family and work as an employment collective, allows us to stay self-employed, while still having the benefits of health care and paying taxes. Making a few successful choices in Web3 showed me that **the value extracted from me to sit in a chair, was still not anywhere near the amount that I could make on my own,** which is another big challenge that’s difficult to see. In Web2, you have a number associated to yourself that gets mistaken for your actual value, but **if you hustle and you have the drive to do more, then no one should be able to put a price on how much you're worth. ** #### Travis Wyche: Amidst those challenges, could you identify an a-ha moment where things started to click for you, maybe with DAOs or even specifically as a member of RaidGuild? #### Penguin: I had an a-ha moment when I was trying to race home for a meeting that I had with the DAO. I don’t remember what the meeting was for, but I do remember racing home because I wanted to be at this meeting. It felt like freedom and I could see that while my schedule had become brutal, there wasn’t a single person in that schedule that I did not feel like speaking with. **The people that I was engaging with were equals and peers and we were all building together. I was part of building Ethereum, not just building little applications. ** It was about the ethos of the community and all the work we were doing that led me to see that **it's not only about Ethereum; it's about building things the right way and together. ** #### Travis Wyche: Perfect. Even within that, admittedly, very righteous realization, if you had to do it all over again, is there anything you would do differently? #### Penguin: I ask myself, if my circumstances hadn't led me to RaidGuild and DAOs, would I still be where I am today? How much of what I've done is luck and how much is an effect of doing what I want to do? I think part of it is luck, but at the same time I enjoyed making friends and being in the right places at the right time. If I was more heads down in my daily job and didn't have the freedom of working from home due to COVID, it could have passed me by and I might still be sitting at a desk! **At my Web2 job, I'm the kind of person who doesn't ever show who I am. I go there, and I say hi. I code all day and then go home. In web 3, I get to be who I am.** No one has given me a hard time about being Penguin, taking time out for my family, what I think or believe, or anything else. It's a very open place and I wouldn't change anything. It's all about working with the best people and doing the most exciting things. Many people come in and they see a lot of chaos in DAOs or how things are working, but my brain just handles a lot of that noise and makes it simple. #### Travis Wyche: Are there any specific tips or tricks that you would offer for the apprentices of the next cohort that might be reading this interview to ensure their success within RaidGuild? #### Penguin: **RaidGuild is a professional environment, hence it's essential to come in with your A game and know what you want to do to help your team.** If you are a front end dev (which is one of the most important and needed aspects of Web3 right now) it's important that you know how to make things look good. Another important point is to work with a team and to be responsible for the people on that team, because you are not just raising your hand to say, *hey, I want to do this, or I want to learn.* It’s really about helping clients, which is professional work. **When we step in front of a raid, it's imperative to make sure that we see it through no matter what. If you are struggling, don't be afraid to ask your group for help.** Communicate where you may not understand things, because everyone's there to see it through. If you sit quietly or disappear, then you're letting your team down. *Reputation is more important than money.* No matter how much you get paid for something, it's more important to have the information and to make good friends along the way. If you start arguing about your portion of the payment, what’s going to matter in five months is the bridges you burned, not the money. Everyone does the best that they can, so money has never been one of the deciding factors. **If you're here only for money, that's probably not the right ethos.** In my experience, one of the best parts of RaidGuild is it’s all about giving back. We want to help out the ecosystem with public goods and public service. **If you're here to refine your craft and meet other people that are here to also work on their craft, you're in a good spot. ** #### Travis Wyche: Are there any specific RaidGuild members that you want to give props to that have helped you along the way, or that we might consider interviewing next for this project? #### Penguin: Obviously, you've heard of Yalor. He's been one of the prominent champions for me, like an aligning magnet. Big props to Yalor, Scottrepreneur, Taekikz. They've been amazing in leading the guild. If you haven’t talked to them, they should be at the top of your list. I have really seen a lot of talent, like Saimano. He's been here for a while and has been an amazing powerhouse behind the scenes. Big props to Saimano. Lately Sasquatch and Travis have stepped up to handle things, so has Mackenzie. Chair has been a good project manager. He has high energy and is a pleasure to work with. #### Travis Wyche: What is your role within RaidGuild? How would you describe that role to an apprentice that's not familiar with the RaidGuild lore? #### Penguin: I'm a member, but not on active raids, per say. I do pick up raids here and there, mostly as a Cleric, but also as a Warrior. I'm a developer and I like to develop, but have found myself engaged primarily with managing projects. I discovered that I'm better at managing people who code than I am at coding myself. A lot of times, it's easier for me to tell people how things should be done and ward off the bad stuff. #### Travis Wyche: You are a member of other DAOs as well, right? Do you serve in a similar capacity and Cleric-type role in those DAOs? #### Penguin: I wear a lot of different hats. In Metafactory, I do a lot of the design work. I was one of the people that helped bring the RaidGuild hoodie. If I look at my DAOhaus UI it says I'm part of 30 different DAOs! For some of them, I am just a member. For others, I give advice, or simply invest. There are many different kinds of DAOs and I play a lot of different roles, depending on the DAO. RaidGuild is unique, because it's a professional service organization. At MetaGame, I'm a diamond founder, but I do a lot of bridge-building there, such as outside management, protocol management, fundraising, managing people, onboarding and being a voice for MetaGame. I travel to conferences and speak at events. I also like WearableDAO, because it’s all about democratizing the NFT marketplace protocol behind wearable.com. A lot of the players in RaidGuild are people that I look up to and respect, so I spent a lot of my time on this side of the sphere. I have nothing against other DAOs, but sometimes a DAO is complex, because it's hard to deal with a lot of people and there's a lot of talking and governance that goes on, but that’s just how DAOs are. **In RaidGuild, if I'm available and I've got time to work, I can pick up a job. It's a lot more focused and goal-driven, so a lot more gets done.** I don't like to talk a lot. I want to work, so I appreciate RaidGuild. I don't have the same relationship with any other DAO like I do with RaidGuild. --- #### Travis Wyche: When did you fall down the crypto rabbit hole? That happened before getting into DAOs and RaidGuild specifically? #### Penguin: Yes, it did. I run a text-based game called Waterdeep that has been around since 1997. I had a developer come in asking for someone to test out one of his games. Essentially, it was an NFT game! After this, I fell down the rabbit hole by asking him questions and he gave me the NFT Bible. I told him, NFT's aren't going to work, man, this doesn't make sense. What if someone copies your NFT? He's a brilliant and well-connected guy and is one of the lead developers for Sandbox, so I bounced ideas off of him for a while until I understood! I went from a gaming-first perspective into Web3. From there, I thought that there had to be other gaming organizations out there. When I looked, I found MetaGame, whose message was so fun and engaging. It just sucked me in and the people that were there were so instrumental. I'm still active in MetaGame as a public service. #### Travis Wyche: I like that MetaGame is a significant entryway for many core contributors, because it's kind of crazy, like their whole mythology of the world. An Octopus and the tentacles and the reach - the image is so awesome. Now I have a couple of questions that are a little bit more philosophical, maybe abstract, but feel free to answer them however you think is right. What do you think constitutes a healthy DAO? #### Penguin: **A healthy DAO is a DAO with active participation from its members, where members are not afraid to break from group-think and are encouraged to say exactly what they mean; there's really no retaliation for someone having a difference of opinion. ** Pet3rpan's sub-DAO paper is about measuring different KPIs and hitting them. It doesn't matter what your metrics for success are, as long as the organization is working towards them. Some financial stability is obviously an important part. If a group can't sustain their means that they need to meet their ends, it's going to end badly, or people are going to have to work for free, which is acceptable to some organizations. We, the members, define what a healthy organization is and what a healthy DAO is and it's important to define what the goals of the members are. If everyone is doing what they want and there is lots of chaos, then the organization will have a tough time delivering on its goals. The health of the organization requires that it knows where it wants to go and how it’s going to get there. Another important aspect is having the ability to handle members that fall outside of the lines, like an off-boarding process. It's effortless when things are going great and everyone's getting along, but sooner or later, there are problems. **Part of being a healthy organization is being prepared for bad times, as well as the good times, and being able to withstand storms, because there are splits in opinion, or splits in the budget.** There are all kinds of considerations that we make when working together. As an organization grows, different stresses will happen, so part of a healthy organization is maintaining that people work together. #### Travis Wyche: On that note, how would you describe the importance of trust and loyalty in Web3 or DAOs, specifically? #### Penguin: **Trust is critical.** For me, when working with other people, there are implicit and explicit trusts, because I'm putting my name with theirs and while this is probably a scary and terrible thing to bring up, DAOs don't offer any kind of legal protection. Everyone's pretty much a general partnership. Often, you are literally taking financial risk for what people in your organization do. Hence, it's important to make sure that you trust those people. Especially when it comes to pseudonyms or fully anonymous people, if you don't trust what they're going to do, then how do you progress? One of the things I liked that M Prime was working on was a trust map, where you can visualize how much I trust someone and then visualize how much other people trust someone. This could give a lot more insight into why someone could be trusted than just your personal experience. **As soon as someone is not trusted, it's also essential that other people know that they can't be trusted, especially in this space. A bad actor left unchecked can destroy or steal millions of dollars from people and can ruin projects. With our implicit trusts, it's critical that we filter and make sure that people are here for the right reasons, because it's not just fun and games for a lot of the stuff we do. ** #### Travis Wyche: Finally, what do you think the future of coordination looks like? #### Penguin: The future of coordination is kind of tricky. I think most people are still in the old world, but DAOs are the future of coordination. Some of the tools we have are Coordinape, Snapshot, Zodiac, etc. I like to describe a crypto year as being every three months. That’s four crypto years in one revolution around the sun. It probably moves so fast because we never really sleep. We have people working on things around the clock. Yes, I want to encourage people to participate, even if they're not developers, or front end people or smart-contract developers, because there are a lot of different skills that are needed on a team. Project managers, marketers and content writers are examples of some of the other things that we need in Web3 to make an effective team. If you are professional, and you are gifted in a craft, don’t think that you have to be boxed into being a developer or any of the other tasks. **Don’t believe anything you see or read; really go and do your own research and know who you're supporting.** The exact opposite is the anon NFT project that promises the world and has a roadmap where everyone gets a rainbow, then they disappear in a week and you're left wondering what happened. It really matters who you're supporting every day. Even if it's something like Adidas! If you’re supporting Adidas, is Adidas supporting you? Probably not. We have the chance to really control the technology space. These places aren't here yet, but they're coming, and they're going to influence the culture. We have the power to really build our network, so that we can put faces and people and support behind things that matter. **My final words are: make sure that you support the people that are out there doing things that matter, rather than marketing or flashy stuff, because that's who needs the help and are out there doing the things that people copy anyways.** #### Travis Wyche: Perfect. Thank you so much for your time. This has been a pleasure!